Why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?

Barack Obama and the CIA
from The Telegraph.co.uk
By: Gerald Warner
image by rees

If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.

Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail.

That is why he opened Pandora's Box by publishing the Justice Department's legal opinions on waterboarding and other hardline interrogation techniques. He cynically subordinated the national interest to his partisan desire to embarrass the Republicans. Then he had to rush to Langley, Virginia to try to reassure a demoralised CIA that had just discovered the President of the United States was an even more formidable foe than al-Qaeda.

"Don't be discouraged by what's happened the last few weeks," he told intelligence officers. Is he kidding? Thanks to him, al-Qaeda knows the private interrogation techniques available to the US intelligence agencies and can train its operatives to withstand them - or would do so, if they had not already been outlawed.

So, next time a senior al-Qaeda hood is captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb. Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers.

Obama promised his CIA audience that nobody would be prosecuted for past actions. That has already been contradicted by leftist groups with a revanchist ambition to put Republicans, headed if possible by Condoleezza Rice, in the dock. Talk about playing party politics with national security. Martin Scheinin, the United Nations special investigator for human rights, claims that senior figures, including former vice president Dick Cheney, could face prosecution overseas. Ponder that - once you have got over the difficulty of locating the United Nations and human rights within the same dimension.

President Pantywaist Obama should have thought twice before sitting down to play poker with Dick Cheney. The former vice president believes documents have been selectively published and that releasing more will prove how effective the interrogation techniques were. Under Dubya's administration, there was no further atrocity on American soil after 9/11.

President Pantywaist's recent world tour, cosying up to all the bad guys, excited the ambitions of America's enemies. Here, they realised, is a sucker they can really take to the cleaners. His only enemies are fellow Americans. Which prompts the question: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?
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FBI Agent: Obama Making Another 9/11 'Inevitable'

from Chandler's Watch.com
Posted by Howie
May 16, 2009

FBI Agent: Obama Making Another 9/11 ‘Inevitable’

from Newsmax.com
By: David A. Patten

A former FBI agent who recently won a lawsuit defeating FBI attempts to muzzle him tells Newsmax that the agency’s morale may be at its lowest ebb ever, and warns the “chilling” effect of Obama administration policies is making another terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland “inevitable.”

Speaking in an exclusive Newsmax interview, retired FBI Agent John Vincent says his gravest concern is that the Obama administration is repeating mistakes of the past, thereby leaving America vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

“I’m not exactly sure where the president is coming from, but all the signals he gives out is that the United States is prepared to talk peace, we’re not going to do anything to upset any of the people that are conducting all these terrorist acts, we’re going to back out of everything we’ve done before, we’re going to apologize for everything we’ve done in the past – what kind of signals does that send?” Vincent asks. “It sends a signal of weakness and: ‘We are not willing to try and stop what you have planned.’”

From 1997 to 1999, Vincent and Special Agent Robert G. Wright worked together out of the Bureau’s Chicago office on an investigation known as Vulgar Betrayal. Their job was to uncover financial links between U.S.-based charities and extremist groups abroad.

Initially, the investigation focused on Hamas. But Vincent says it eventually exposed “an octopus” of financial connections to other terror groups, including al-Qaida.

In 1999, Vincent says, the FBI shut down the criminal investigation for fear it would interfere with ongoing attempts gathering intelligence. The FBI did not immediately respond to a Newsmax request to comment on either the case or Vincent’s allegations.

“Had the investigation been allowed to go forward, we might have touched upon some of the 9/11 perpetrators,” Vincent tells Newsmax. “We don’t know that because we were stopped two years before the event. But because we had such an octopus working out there, we might have found those people. But we don’t know, because we were stopped.”

Post-9/11 investigations revealed that U.S.-based Islamic charities funneled money to al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations, funding their operations.

According to a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, the FBI tried to prevent Vincent and Wright from speaking to the media after the 9/11 attacks.

The judge who presided over the case, U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler, blasted the Bureau, calling its efforts to silence the men a “sad and discouraging tale.”

“In its efforts to suppress this information,” Judge Kessler wrote, “the FBI repeatedly changed its position, presented formalistic objections to release of various portions of the documents in question, admitted finally that much of the material it sought to suppress was in fact in the public domain and had been all along, and now concedes that several of the reasons it originally offered for censorship no longer have any validity.”

The judge added ominously: “Unfortunately, the issues of terrorism and alleged FBI incompetence remain as timely as ever.”

After the agency shut down Vulgar Betrayal, Wright wrote a 500-page book manuscript and submitted it to the agency as required by law. The agency sought to censor its publication, and to stop Vincent and Wright from speaking to the media.

Vincent retired in December 2002, but Wright continues to be employed by the agency. Vincent tells Newsmax that Wright has chosen not to risk his job, or his retirement, by speaking to the media.

According to Judicial Watch, Wright was the only FBI agent prior to 9/11 to seize funds from U.S.-based terrorists using federal statues on civil forfeiture. That kept over $1.4 million out of terrorists’ hands.

“Wright and Vincent sought to blow the whistle to help prevent other terrorist attacks like 9/11,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton stated following the judge’s May 8 verdict. “We hope it is not too late for the FBI to listen to our clients, clean up its act, and better protect our nation from the Islamic terrorist threat.”

Vincent, a former Judicial Watch employee, says his primary concern today is that the leaders of the FBI and other counter-terrorism agencies are taking their signals from the Obama administration, softening their approach to the war on terror, and leaving the country more vulnerable.

“That’s what we’re doing all over again now,” Vincent says. “So we’re not utilizing all of the techniques available. We can play nicey-nice with the terrorists, and not use some of the techniques that we used, and we’re tying our hands. By stopping these things, or chilling activities by law enforcement, we’re doing the same thing, we’re tying our hands.”

He adds, “We’re tying the hands of law enforcement by these mixed signals going out. We’re not using all the things we should be using in an all out war. This should be an all out war, not tying one hand behind our back because it’s not politically correct.”

Drawing on his more than three decades of experience as an FBI agent, Vincent said the administration’s new approach to terrorism can only serve to discourage aggressive counter-terror operations by various federal agencies.

Vincent should know: He tells Newsmax that when he first moved into the agency’s Chicago office to begin his investigation in the mid-1990s, policies actually prohibited agents from conducting investigative interviews in the field.

“They wouldn’t even leave the office,” he says. “Well, how can you possibly conduct counter-terrorism operations by sitting there gathering intelligence and never doing anything with it, never trying to develop sources, never talking to people? That’s the way you counter terrorist activities,” he says. “You don’t sit in an office,” Vincent tells Newsmax.

With the Obama administration’s threat of prosecutions and its “kinder, gentler” approach to the war on terror, Vincent predicts “That’s exactly what [agents' supervisors] are going to do. They’re going to say, ‘Why should I put my neck on the line here? If I go out and do something I’m going to be second guessed for it later on?’ And I think that’s the message that’s being put out by this new Congress and this new president, which is: ‘Well, we’re going to play nice guys with them, don’t do anything to upset them.’ Meanwhile, they’re cutting your throat.”

Vincent sees Obama’s approach to counter-terrorism as less effective than the Clinton administration’s, because his willingness to negotiate will be seen as weakness in the Middle East. Obama’s policies, he says, will contribute to the next terror attack that Vincent contends will inevitably occur.

“I hate to say it, but yes, it’s inevitable,” Vincent says.

Vincent, who speaks regularly with a network of former agents who are in touch with current agency employees, says Obama’s policies — from closing the Guantanamo prison, releasing memos on “enhanced interrogations,” negotiating with America’s enemies, apologizing internationally for Bush administration policies, and threatening of prosecutions — are inadvertently “emboldening the enemies” of America.

“All the signals he’s putting out [are] causing law enforcement – FBI, CIA – to back up because in the future, ‘If I try to do my job I may get prosecuted for it.’ And then the idea that he apologizes, etc., that’s going to embolden the enemies and they’re going to think we’re easy pickings now.

“And that’s where I think we’re headed, back to prior to the Clinton administration, prior to 9/11, to an area that we don’t want to go. Because… when you back off, and don’t keep doing what you think is the right thing to do, eventually you’ll have a bigger war on your hands — or a bigger catastrophe worse than 9/11,” he says.

Vincent adds that his sources tell him “morale within the organization is probably the lowest it’s ever been. And when you have people who are demoralized, they’re not going to do a good job.”

He also tells Newsmax that he suspects the Obama administration has yet to comprehend the effects of its own policies.

“This administration is weakening every aspect of counterterrorism, and they don’t even know it,” Vincent warns. “They think they’re playing a game with people who follow the rules. Well, these people do not follow any rules. So yes, we can be high-minded, and at the same time we’re going to get our legs cut out from underneath us. Because they don’t play by the rules, they’re not nice people. And that’s what this administration is doing.”

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Complete 911 Timeline
Robert Wright and Operation Vulgar Betrayal
Project: Complete 911 Timeline

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Cheney: Obama endangers the nation

from The Washington Times
By Sean Lengell
Sunday, May 10, 2009

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday continued his verbal attack against President Obama, saying that the country is more vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack since the Obama administration took power.

Mr. Cheney said that administration's dismantling of many of the policies and protections instituted by President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks — including the planned closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba and halting controversial prisoner interrogation techniques — have made the country more vulnerable to future attacks.

"That's my belief," Mr. Cheney said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "I think to the extent that those [Bush-era] policies were responsible for saving lives, that the administration is now trying to cancel those policies … means in the future we're not going to have the same safeguards we've had for the last eight years."

The former vice president defended controversial interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, saying that it had been an effective tool in extracting useful information from suspected terrorists such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of helping carry out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks Washington and New York.

"He did not cooperate fully in terms of interrogations until after waterboarding," Mr. Cheney said. "Once we went through that process, he produced vast quantities of invaluable information about al Qaida."

Mr. Obama in January banned the practice on prisoners by U.S. interrogators.

Mr. Cheney said he believes it's his duty to speak out against the Obama administration "because I think the issues that are at stake here are so important."

Mr. Cheney also took a shot at former Bush administration Secretary of State Colin Powell, saying that the conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh is a more loyal Republican than the former Army commander.

"If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh," Mr. Cheney said.
Mr. Powell recently said that Republicans need to more move to the center politically and that Mr. Limbaugh's polarizing far-right rhetoric hurts the party's image.

Mr. Limbaugh retaliated by accusing Mr. Powell of being "just another liberal" and that he should become a Democrat.

"I think my take on it was Colin had already left the party," Mr. Cheney said. "I didn't know he was still a Republican."
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The Taliban want to move the war to Pakistani cities

The Taliban know that the U.S. Military is fighting in Afghanistan with one arm tied behind their back. They know that if the war can be moved to Pakistani cities, that the U.S. troops will have to fight with both hands tied behind their back. The Taliban will continue to be barbaric and savage in their killing. They will intimidate citizens into supporting them and into sabotaging any effort by U.S. troops. The Taliban will just march forward until they control Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons.

When that happens, watch out for a war between India and Pakistan. The only reason a nuclear confrontation hasn't already happened between India and Pakistan, is because you currently have sane people on both sides who are in control of the weapons. That all changes on the Pakistani side if the Taliban take control.
Rees

April 27, 2009
Afghan-Pakistan: Al Qaida's new safe haven
By James Lewis

The Obama administration looks like it's going to acquiesce in the face of a nuclear-armed radicalized Pakistan, just as Jimmy Carter bowed down low in the face of Ayatollah Khomeini. Soon we will have two radicalized Muslim states with nuclear weapons and long-range missiles: A Shiite Iran, and a Sunni Pakistan.

Afghanistan is slipping out of control. But worse, Afghanistan is no longer the main battleground: a Taliban-controlled Pakistan is.

And in case you've forgotten, in the decade before 9/11 Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaida suiciders found safe haven with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Talibs are Islamist fanatics just like Ahmadinejad. They will die for Allah. That means they may not be rational actors in the Western sense. They certainly will stir up terror attacks in India and maybe Sri Lanka and the Philippines, just as the Iranians are sponsoring terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Gaza and Egypt.

Once they have nuclear weapons, they will have safe havens for further terrorist attacks. Expect nuclear weapons and long-range missiles to start spreading even faster.

Weakness? Our enemies have taken the measure of Obama and Hillary Clinton. They are not bothering to wait. They know this is Jimmy Carter II in the White House, and they are acting accordingly. Expect push, push, push on all the fronts: South America with Chavez, Noriega and the Castro brothers, now trying to control Brazil; Africa with Zuma, another mad radical now in control of the modern state of South Africa; the Sudan under its genocidal regime, backed by the Arab League and tolerated by the UN; Iran and Syria now within reach of their own nukes and missiles; and Russia, which will play big power games in the Middle East as long as it hurts the West.

The Taliban just accepted Pakistan's surrender in six provinces. They promptly moved on the seventh province, and are now within a day's drive of the capital of Pakistan. And the West? The West can't even hold down medieval terrorist pirates in little speed boats, who are making a good living off kidnapping Westerners and terrorizing Western shipping companies. The pirates are making the West pay for the Shabab Islamist rebellion in Somalia.

Remember Osama Bin Laden's strong horse and weak horse? Barack Obama is the weak horse. The Muslim world may have hated Bush, but they despise weakness.

Around the world radical Islamists will see the Talibanization of Pakistan, with its glittering jewels of nukes and missiles, as a sign of Allah's favor on their world-wide battle. They will see Tehran's nukes the same way. Europe's major cities are now majority Islamist.

Europe is frozen in fear, and reverting to traditional anti-Semitism to please the enemy at home. Even Britain is doing it.

The Obama crowd just refused to use our best radar facility merely to track North Korea's new missile launch. Tracking Kim's missile might have been "provocative". They are talking down missile defense, and failing to support our military. Instead, they are going to assault the Bush Administration's defense of America after 9/11. The only question is whether they will conduct that assault through the New York Times and the anti-American media, as the Democrats did during the Bush years, or whether they will do it by criminalizing members of the military and the intelligence agencies and actually putting them in the dock.

It will be the first time in American history that an administration has prosecuted its predecessor for defending the United States from enemies, foreign or domestic.
This going to be a very dangerous decade.
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Taliban murder couple for allegedly committing adultery

This video is very graphic and obviously disturbing. I've included it to demonstrate how brutal the Taliban is. There is no mercy or justice in their society. Justice is what they want it to be at that particular moment in time. What's very bizarre is the fact that they behave as if they're still in the middle ages, yet they're recording this savage behaviour using a cell phone.
Rees




Taliban gunmen have been filmed executing a surprised couple whom they repeatedly shot for the alleged crime of adultery

Their deaths were squalid, riddled with bullets in a field near their home by Taliban gunmen as the execution was captured on a mobile telephone.

In footage which is being watched with horror by Pakistanis, the couple try to flee when they realise what is about to happen. But a gunman casually shoots the man and then the woman in the back with a burst of gunfire, leaving them bleeding in the dirt.

Moments later, when others in the execution party shout out that they are still alive, he returns to coldly finish them with a few more rounds.

Their "crime" was an alleged affair in their remote mountain village controlled by militants in an area that was only recently under the government's sway. It was the kind of barbarity that has become increasingly familiar across Pakistan as the Taliban tide has spread.

But this time, with black-turbaned gunmen almost at the gates of Islamabad, the rare footage has shown urban Pakistanis what could now await them.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned that Islamic extremists could take over the nation.

In the past few days the footage has circulated among Pakistanis who usually show little interest in the rough ways of the distant frontier regions.

They have now started to wake up to the fear that al-Qaeda-linked rebels from the frontier could take over their nation.

The killings happened in Hangu district, in North West Frontier Province, about two hours drive from the regional capital Peshawar. The punishment was administered by a local group of the Pakistani Taliban, the Islamic militia which has swept across the NWFP towards the capital Islamabad.

Last week, the Taliban had reached within 60 miles of Islamabad, in Buner district. Their takeover sparked panic in the West, which was already appalled by a peace deal that the government had signed this month with Taliban in adjacent the Swat valley.

In an extraordinary move, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called on the people of Pakistan to defy their government, saying they "need to speak out forcefully against a policy that is ceding more and more territory to the insurgents".

The Taliban had agreed a withdrawal, in the last couple of days, to their stronghold of Swat. That will scarcely make the government and elite in the capital Islamabad feel much safer, as Swat is only 100 miles from them.

"The Taliban are steady and confident, the government is weak and faltering," said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University and one of Pakistan's leading intellectuals.

"A Taliban victory will enslave our women, destroy Pakistan's rich historical and cultural heritage, make education and science impossible, and make the lives of its citizens impossibly difficult. Some are already contemplating an exodus."

Pakistan today stands on a knife-edge, threatened with anarchy. The desperate deal signed with the Taliban in Swat looks set to fall apart. The result will almost certainly be violence. An army convoy heading into Swat on Saturday morning was stopped by the Taliban and forced to turn back, in a naked display of their power.

They seem to have been only emboldened by the peace agreement. Many believe that a bloody military operation now looks inevitable,

For those in areas falling under Taliban control, their harsh rule is terrifying.

An SOS text message sent out on Friday by a terrified local resident, in an area of Swat called Bahrain, says that the Taliban have established total control. Asking not be named for fear of reprisal, he said that they have set up check posts at the entrance to Bahrain, from where they kidnap those they want, including young women.

"They've even warned the local schools to close the girl classes or face dire consequences. Yet the government says its writ is in Swat."

Another Swat resident said: "Every day I see armed Taliban move around freely. At the time of prayer, if they see anyone in his shop or walking about, they whip him with a stick."

The Pakistani Taliban, a copy of the Afghan extremist movement, have long controlled the tribal area along the Afghan border, which is a sanctuary for militants, including al-Qaeda. But it is their march into the heart of the country that has horrified ordinary Pakistanis, and the wider world. And the threat comes not just from the Taliban to the west. Islamic extremists, who are not part of the Taliban, are already entrenched in Islamabad and across the Punjab, the most populous province, seemingly ready to surface when their moment comes.

Islamabad's defences are being hurriedly fortified, with paramilitary troops stationed on the Margalla Hills, which overlook the city from the West. In the capital, there are thousands of followers of the radical Red Mosque, where there are now open calls for Islamic revolution at the weekly Friday prayers.

"The Taliban will not stop at Swat. They will come towards Islamabad," said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military analyst based in Lahore. "If the army is to take action against them, it is going to be a really bloody battle. And then civil government will be knocked out."

"Extremist groups based in Islamabad will move from within and they (Taliban) will build pressure from outside."

The footage Pakistanis have been watching shows them what they could expect.

A local journalist was invited to witness the execution, who filmed it with his mobile phone for a Pakistani channel, Dawn News. The Sunday Telegraph is showing the footage in the West for the first time.

There were no names for the two victims.

"Using the media is part of their (the Taliban's) psychological warfare," said Imtiaz Gul, chairman of Centre for Research and Security Studies, an independent think tank in Islamabad. "This way, they inject fear into the minds of people who might oppose them, keeping the majority silent."

After the couple were shot, the family were told to take their bodies away for burial. The punishment was administered by a local group of the Pakistani Taliban linked to warlord Baitullah Mehsud.
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Pakistan could collapse within six months: US expert

6 Apr 2009

from The Times of India

NEW YORK : Pakistan could collapse within six months in the face of snowballing insurgency, according to a top expert on guerrilla warfare.

Such dire prediction was given by David Kilcullen, a former adviser to top US military commander General David H. Petraeus.

Petraeus also echoed the same thought when he told a Congressional testimony last week that insurgency was one which could "take down" Pakistan, which is home to nuclear arms and al-Qaida.

Kilcullen's comments come as Pakistan is witnessing an unprecedented upswing in terrorists strikes and now some analysts in Pakistan and Washington are putting forward apocalyptic timetables for the country.

In an analysis piece, the New York Times cast doubts about the success of President Barack Obama's strategy offering Pakistan a partnership to defeat insurgency, but the Pakistanis still consider India enemy number one.

Officially, Pakistan's government welcomed Obama's strategy, with its hefty infusions of American money, hailing it as a "positive change", the paper said.

But as the Obama administration tries to bring Pakistanis to its side, large parts of the public, political class and the military have brushed off the plan, rebuffing the idea that the threat from al-Qaida and the Taliban, which Washington calls a common enemy, is so urgent, it added.

Some, including the Pak army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and President Asif Ali Zardari may be coming around but for the military, at least, India remains priority No. 1, as it has for the 61 years of Pakistan's existence, the paper said.

How to shift that focus in time for Pakistan to defeat a fast-expanding Islamic insurgency that threatens to devour the country is the challenge facing Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, and Richard C Holbrooke, the special envoy to the region, as they arrive in Pakistan for talks later this week, the Times emphasised.

Strengthening Pakistan's weak civilian institutions, updating political parties rooted in feudal loyalties and recasting a military "fixated on yesterday's enemy", and stuck in the traditions of conventional warfare, are generational challenges, the paper said, warning that Pakistan may not have the luxury of the long term to meet them.

Even before the insurgency has been fully engaged, however, many Pakistanis have concluded that reaching an accommodation with the militants is preferable to fighting them. Some, including mid-ranking soldiers, choose to see the militants not as the enemy, but as fellow Muslims who are deserving of greater sympathy than are the American aims, the paper added.

It is problematic whether the backing of Zardari, and the Obama administration's promise of USD 1.5 billion in aid for each of the next five years, can change the mood in the country, former interior minister Aftab Ahmad Sherpao, who visited Washington last fall to meet some of the people who are now officials in the new administration, was quoted as saying.

Fighting the insurgency is commonly seen in Pakistan as an American cause, not a Pakistani one, he said.

There are questions, too, of whether the Obama's offer of nearly USD 3 billion in counterinsurgency aid can quickly convert the Pakistani military from a force trained to fight India on the plains of Punjab into an outfit that can conquer the mountains of the tribal areas, where the militants operate, the Times said.

"After such a long time of being with the Americans, the country has been through such stress and strain and nothing good has come of it," Sherpao told the paper. "A cross-section of people is dead set against the Americans. Another section is not happy but not vocal. About 1 to 2 per cent would say this policy of America should continue."

The distrust, the Times points out, has been heightened by charges from American officials, including General Petraeus and Holbrooke, that Pakistan's spy agency ISI is still supporting the Islamic militants who pour over the border to fight American troops in Afghanistan.

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US airstrike in Iraq threatens peace among militia

From The Times
April 4, 2009

by Deborah Haynes in Baghdad

A mutiny in the ranks of a key Iraqi militia credited with helping US forces to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq is threatening to plunge the country back into bloody sectarian violence.

The rebellion by some members of the Awakening Councils, a Sunni Arab paramilitary force of more than 90,000 men, could unravel the improvements in security since 2007. If left unchecked it threatens to push the country back to the brink of civil war, pitting Sunnis against the Shias.

A US airstrike on Thursday night targeted a group of Awakening Council men north of Baghdad who were suspected of planting a roadside bomb. One person was killed and two others were wounded and arrested.

The attack came days after some of the worst fighting in Baghdad in two years. Local Awakening guards clashed with the Iraqi Army after their leader was arrested on criminal and terrorism charges. Iraqi soldiers moved into the Fadhil district on Sunday and ordered fighters to surrender.

The crackdown alarmed other Awakening units, who fear that they are being treated unfairly by the Government for sectarian reasons. Scores of guards, many of whom fought as insurgents before switching sides, have been arrested in the past fortnight.

Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia Prime Minister, said that the operation in Fadhil came after months of investigation. “The issue was not for political or media purposes,” Mr al-Maliki said.

The offensive sent a message “to those who are following the same path taken by the gang in Fadhil that their fate will be the same”, he said.

The renewed violence will be greeted with alarm by the US military, which is drawing down its forces because of the reduction in violence.

One leader in the restive province of Diyala said that the Government did not trust the Awakening movement because it was made up of Sunni Arabs. “We fought al-Qaeda so how could it be that my guys are terrorists?” said the man, who goes by the nickname of Abu Iraq (father of Iraq). “I do not trust my Government.”

The Awakening Councils were a key part of the strategy developed by General David Petraeus, whose surge of US forces two years ago was credited with pulling Iraq out of its descent into civil war and defeating al-Qaeda.

Awakening Councils were conceived in 2006. The sheikhs had supported or approved of the insurgency but had become repulsed by the indiscriminate killings by groups such as al-Qaeda. They agreed to recruit thousands of fighters to turn against the extremists in return for a salary. The initiative spread across the country. Insurgents who once received cash for planting bombs against the coalition forces took up guns under the payroll of US officers to protect their neighbourhood in one of the most significant turning points in the war.

Many members of the Government opposed the creation of this mainly Sunni Arab armed force and remain concerned that the Awakening Councils have been infiltrated by al-Qaeda and other militant groups.

Responsibility for the Awakening Councils was handed over gradually to the Iraqi authorities. A fifth of the men were supposed to be absorbed into the Iraqi security forces, with the rest given help to find civilian jobs. Little progress has been made in recruiting any of the guards however.

Officials insist they are committed to working with the guards but a drop in the price of oil has restricted plans.

Abu Iraq, who commands about 1,000 men, said that almost 500 had been laid off without the prospect of employment and there was no sign that the 530 still with jobs would be accepted into the security forces soon. “The danger is that the violence starts again in our neighbourhood. There are many guys with no jobs,” he said.

Many Awakening Council members complain that they have not received a salary for up to three months.

Sons of Iraq

- The Awakening Councils, also known as the Sons of Iraq, were formed in 2006 after Sunni tribesmen rose against al-Qaeda

- The US Army paid monthly salaries to the estimated 90,000 Sons of Iraq until last year

- Iraq is dragging its feet on a pledge to take a fifth of its members into the security forces

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No We Can't - Obama Fails to Secure Additional Troops for Afghanistan

From The Times
April 4, 2009
by Michael Evans and David Charter in Strasbourg

Barack Obama made an impassioned plea to America’s allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, warning that failure to do so would leave Europe vulnerable to more terrorist atrocities.

But though he continued to dazzle Europeans on his debut international tour, the Continent’s leaders turned their backs on the US President.

Gordon Brown was the only one to offer substantial help. He offered to send several hundred extra British soldiers to provide security during the August election, but even that fell short of the thousands of combat troops that the US was hoping to prise from the Prime Minister.

Just two other allies made firm offers of troops. Belgium offered to send 35 military trainers and Spain offered 12. Mr Obama’s host, Nicolas Sarkozy, refused his request.

The derisory response threatened to tarnish Mr Obama’s European tour, which yesterday included a spellbinding performance in Strasbourg in which he offered the world a vision of a future free of nuclear weapons.

Mr Obama – who has pledged 21,000 more troops to combat the growing insurgency and is under pressure from generals to supply up to 10,000 more – used the eve of Nato’s 60th anniversary summit to declare bluntly that it was time for allies to do their share. “Europe should not simply expect the United States to shoulder that burden alone,” he said. “This is a joint problem it requires a joint effort.”

He said that failing to support the US surge would leave Europe open to a fresh terrorist offensive. “It is probably more likely that al-Qaeda would be able to launch a serious terrorist attack on Europe than on the United States because of proximity,” he said.

The presidential charm offensive failed to move fellow Nato countries. President Sarkozy told Mr Obama that France would not be sending reinforcements to bolster its existing force northeast of Kabul.

Germany, Italy, Poland, Canada and Denmark said that they were considering their positions. After a meeting with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, Mr Obama tried to apply further moral pressure. “I am sure that Germany, as one of the most important leaders in Europe, will be stepping up to the plate and helping us to get the job done.”

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato Secretary-General, warned that new laws proposed by President Karzai in Afghanistan sanctioning child marriage and marital rape had made it harder to raise more soldiers.

“We are there to defend universal values and when I see, at the moment, a law threatening to come into effect which fundamentally violates women’s rights and human rights, that worries me,” he said.

“I have a problem to explain to a critical public audience in Europe, be it the UK or elsewhere, why I’m sending the guys to the Hindu Kush.”

The temporary British deployment falls short of the 2,000 soldiers that the Army had planned to deploy long-term to Afghanistan and appeared to catch defence chiefs by surprise.

Mr Brown announced the commitment as he flew into Strasbourg for the two-day summit, but hopes that it would spur other allies to follow suit were soon dashed. British officials said that the extra troops, expected to number between 500 and 700 – increasing Britain’s military strength there to about 9,000 – would be dispatched to southern Afghanistan for a four-month period leading up to and beyond the election, due to take place on August 20.

The plan is to withdraw them once the election is over. Mr Brown said that the extra troops were only supposed to provide a “temporary uplift”.

Military contingency plans remain on the table to send up to 2,000 more troops long-term, taking the total to 10,000, but that will depend on the political will to approve the deployment.

Although the Prime Minister discussed Afghanistan with President Obama when they held bilateral talks before the G20 summit in London, it is understood that no formal offer of extra troops was made.
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Attack on the U.S. Capital is next says Taliban Chief Mehsud

I'm going to take a wild guess that this guy is not one of the moderate Taliban that Obama wants to have tea with.
Rees

Very soon we will launch an attack in Washington which will amaze the entire world – Taliban Chief Baitullah Mehsud

SOURCE: Free Internet Press

LAHORE: Pakistan's most wanted militant on Tuesday claimed responsibility for a deadly police academy assault and threatened to attack the U.S. Capital in retaliation for a series of air strikes. ( Watch )

Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, for whom the United States has posted a five-million-dollar reward, said there would be more attacks after Monday's raid on the Lahore police training school that left 12 people dead.

"We claim responsibility for the attack," Mehsud, blamed for the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, said by telephone from an undisclosed location. "This was in retaliation for the ongoing drone attacks in the tribal areas. There will be more such attacks."

"Very soon we will take revenge from America, not in Afghanistan but in Washington, which will amaze the entire world," Mehsud warned.

Seven cadets, a civilian and four attackers died in Monday's raid on the police academy in eastern city Lahore, sparking fears that unrest is seeping out of the tribal badlands and into the heart of Pakistan. Assailants armed with guns, grenades and suicide vests shot their way into the academy in the morning, triggering eight hours of gun battles that lasted until they were overpowered by security forces.

Mehsud, who was accused by the former government of masterminding Bhutto's killing, heads the feared Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The US State Department has branded him a "key al-Qaida facilitator" in the semi-autonomous South Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan. Mehsud said he had set up a council of mujahedeen (holy warriors) grouping different groups "to step up attacks on US and NATO forces in Afghanistan."

He dismissed the US reward for his arrest. "The maximum they can do is martyr me," he said. "We will exact our revenge on them from inside America." Mehsud's group is influential in both North and South Waziristan, as well as in the Bajaur tribal district to the north, which Pakistani security forces said they had effectively cleared last month following a major offensive. He commands thousands of fighters across the tribal areas on the Afghan border, although official estimates vary on the precise number. His capacity for launching attacks outside the region is questionable.

At least 35 US drone strikes have killed over 340 people in Pakistan since August last year. The US military does not usually confirm such attacks, but its armed forces and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operating in Afghanistan are the only ones to deploy drones in the region.

In Lahore, interrogators questioned dozens of people over the assault. Punjab province's police chief Khalid Farooq said 50 had been picked up. "These people will now be interrogated," he added. "Things are moving in a positive direction but it is too early to say who was involved." A bearded man -- who interior ministry chief Rehman Malik said was Afghan -- was arrested for allegedly trying to attack police outside the compound. Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif said a judicial commission would be set up to investigate the attack, whose findings would be made public. Chief suspects for the attack are homegrown Islamist groups or Taliban and al-Qaida militants holed up in the tribal areas.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking at an international conference on Afghanistan Tuesday, backed plans for reconciliation talks with members of the Taliban or past Al-Qaeda supporters who reject violence. "They should be offered an honorable form of reconciliation and reintegration into a peaceful society, if they are willing to abandon violence, break with al-Qaida, and support the constitution," she said. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband condemned Monday's attack near Lahore and pledged international help to root out the extremist threat. Lahore was also the setting for the March 3 gun attack on Sri Lanka's cricket team that left eight Pakistanis dead.
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What Does Al Qaeda Have in Common with Al Gore?

To start of with:
'Al'

200 UK schoolchildren identified as potential terrorists

A police scheme has identified two hundred schoolchildren in Britain – some as young as 13 - as potential terrorists.

By Daily Mail Reporter

The programme aims to spot children who are vulnerable to Islamic radicalisation and was revealed by Sir Norman Bettison, the chief constable of West Yorkshire Police and Britain’s most senior officer in charge of terror prevention.


The ‘Channel project’ has intervened in at least 200 cases of children thought to be at risk since it began 18 months ago.

It is run by the Association of Chief Police Officers and asks teachers, parents and community figures to watch for signs of extremist views or whether a child is being ‘groomed’ by radicalise rs.

Sir Norman told The Independent: ‘What will often manifest itself is what might be regarded as racism and the adoption of bad attitudes towards “the West”.
‘
One of the four bombers of July 7 was, on the face of it, a model student. He had never been in trouble with the police, was the son of a well-established family and was employed and integrated into society.

‘But when we went back to his teachers they remarked on the things he used to write. In exercise books he had written comments praising al-Qaeda.

‘That was not seen at the time as being substantive. Now we would hope that teachers might intervene, speak to the child’s family or perhaps the local imam who could then speak to the young man.’

‘We are targeting criminals and would-be terrorists who happen to be cloaking themselves in Islamic rhetoric. That is not the same as targeting the Muslim community.’

‘That said, clearly in recent years some people have been lured by terrorist propaganda emanating from al-Qa'ida-inspired groups.

'It would seem that a number of Muslim youngsters have been seduced by that narrative and all of us, including the Government, have a role to play in making sure that narrative is seen for what it is: a nihilistic one which offers no hope, only death and destruction.’

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘The aim of the Channel project is to directly support vulnerable people by providing supportive interventions when families, communities and networks raise concerns about their behaviour.’
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Christian extremist kills 48 at Pakistan mosque -- no, wait...It was actually a Muslim

More Muslims Killing Muslims
from Jihad Watch.com
"A government official accused Islamist militants of carrying out the bombing in revenge for a recent offensive aimed in part at protecting the major supply route for NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan that passes in front of the mosque."

Remember this one the next time you hear a story about Muslims outraged over Americans, or Israelis returning fire from a mosque, or over alleged desecration of a Qur'an, etc.

by Riaz Khan
from Associated Press
March 27, 2009

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A suicide bomber demolished a mosque packed with hundreds of worshippers attending Friday prayers close to the Afghan border, killing at least 48 people and injuring scores more, officials said.

The attack in the Khyber region was the bloodiest in Pakistan this year and came hours before President Barack Obama was due to unveil a revised strategy expected to emphasize the need to eradicate militant havens along the Pakistan-Afghan frontier.

A government official accused Islamist militants of carrying out the bombing in revenge for a recent offensive aimed in part at protecting the major supply route for NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan that passes in front of the mosque.

"Residents of this area had cooperated and helped us a lot. These infidels had warned that they will take revenge," said Tariq Hayat, the top administrator of the Khyber tribal region. "They are the enemy of Pakistan. They are the enemy of Islam."

Rising violence in Pakistan is fueling doubts about the pro-Western government's ability to counter Taliban and al-Qaida militants also blamed for attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan.

The bomber hit the mosque, a popular stop for travelers motoring between Pakistan and Afghanistan, when about 250 people were attending Friday prayers, said Hayat....
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